No Time To Waste

What's the problem?

Reducing food loss and waste is one of the most important actions we can take to fight the climate crisis. Food waste has untenable environmental, economic, and social costs. Globally, it accounts for 8–10% of all human generated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and costs the world more than USD 1 trillion in economic losses per year. The scale of global food waste is so vast that one often turns to analogies to describe it: that if food waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest GHG emitter; that the amount of land used worldwide to grow wasted food is larger than the surface area of India and Canada combined; that the annual global blue water footprint of food waste is about 3.6 times the blue water footprint of total US consumption.

In 2021, the EU imported almost 138 million tonnes of agricultural products from outside of its borders, worth a total of €150 billion. These imports are eclipsed by the amount of food — 153.5 million tonnes — that is wasted in the
EU each year. Meanwhile, a global food crisis is unfurling. Already across the block, 33 million people cannot afford a quality meal every second day. Food insecurity in the EU disproportionately impacts women and people with other
historically marginalised identities. Since reducing food waste can play a role in reducing food insecurity, this means that, in addition to being a driver of climate change, food waste is a key human rights and social security issue.